Beyond The Cloud

Mr. Jongkyu Seo, General Manager & Head of Department (Product Planning Team) as well as Mr. John Lee, Deputy Head of Overseas Sales for Pittasoft were present at Blackvue’s dealer appreciation lunch at the Shangri-la Rasa Sentosa. Aptly themed “Touch Beyond The Cloud”, this symbolises the brand’s positive step to go beyond the in-car dash cam needs and incorporation of new cloud technologies. We talk to them to gain some insights to the future of the car dashcam…

On the move to touchscreen:
The market is changing and customers are asking for more features. We are adapting our products to answer the market’s needs, such as our innovative cloud service which have received many positive feedback from our customers. We are going to developing more features such as going beyond full HD resolutions, such as 4K.

Challenges of going to 4K:
We are working on a new compression technology, H.265. That compression technology is much more advanced than the current H.264 and it helps to maintain the file size as Full HD cameras of today. This is the core technology that enables 4K recording to be introduced to the car dashcam.

How do you come up with new ideas?
Every moment, we are always looking for new developments in technology. For example, Blackvue’s Cloud was based on the then-developing IOT (Internet Of Things) technology segment. 4K is the new frontier when it comes to dashcams, that is why we want to be at the forefront of this emerging technology. We are trying out various new sensors ranging from 6- 8-megapixels now.

With “integration” being the buzzword in the industry…
We have plans to develop and introduce new products to have dashcams to be built into the car. A car’s network is highly complex and it will take more than just a little bit of effort to integrate our dashcam into such a system. Blackvue will be one of the companies to be developing this advanced system.

Any problems then?
One of the problem is: Car manufacturers don’t want to be responsible for the built-in cameras. However, we think that our Blackvue Cloud service will spread to more “connected cars”, that is why we are focused on further developing and refining the Blackvue Cloud system.

A glimpse into the future…
As a planning guy, we are developing more features for our cloud service. For example, a voice commander – something that smartphones have – to the dashcam, to enable drivers to talk to the dashcam without having to press buttons and distracting them from the driving.

Another feature we are looking at is improving the GPS tracking. It is more of a business-2-business market (B2B) feature but we see potential in it. For example, we can analyse the driver’s habits which can help to reduce fuel consumption as well as reduce traffic accidents.

On the software front, Blackvue is developing the software development kit (SDK). This allows companies to run Blackvue Cloud services on their own secure servers for data security. This also allows them the flexibility to integrate their solutions with the Blackvue protocols.

On the design:
We’ve been using the same cylindrical design for years, and it has been a form of our identification. We’re still going to keep the design to a distinctive Blackvue look, in terms of size and identification.

Has the markets for the dashcams changed much?
The market for the dashcams has changed drastically. In the USA, the rapid expansion of the market saw us dealing with big fleet companies. We’re expecting a lot of change in the years to come – with more dashcam markets to be emerging this year.

Some of the new markets include the Middle East as well as East Asian markets like Vietnam and Thailand.

So, has there been a market-specific product so far?
No, but there are countries where a particular product sells better. For example: Japan. The Japanese want small, inconspicuous cameras and it is one of the developing markets where people are picking up more Blackvues.

Where do you see Blackvue in the future?
We’re not resting on our laurels, and we’re listening to all kinds of requests from the market. We closely listen and work with customer evaluations from our partners, for example Wow! Gadgets, and we are more focused on adding value to our products. With so many new products coming up, we are hoping to see new markets emerge too!